1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Beat Downs and how to cover them

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by silvershadow1981, Jan 16, 2008.

  1. Guys and Gals,

    I just returned home from covering probably the most brutal girls' basketball game I've ever seen. The home team, 10-0 coming into the game and fresh off an emotional win against another top contender in the conference Friday night, played the conference's last place team who hadn't won a game up to this point.

    Well, they still haven't.

    Final score? Home team 73, visiting team....errr...uh...umm...*looks around and whispers* 6.

    So after talking to the winning coach, who surprisingly was about as humble and honest without being a jerk as humanly possible and getting the box scores, I drove back here and thought "how the hell can I get a story out of this?"

    Mind you I work for a weekly (tomorrow's my three month anniversary on the job), and the story's not due 'till this coming Tuesday, but I want to ask the vets and newbies like myself on this board how you cover smack-downs of this magnitude.

    Any advice and tips you all may have will be greatly appreciated. I'm gonna go scratch my head and frown my face up some more at what I've just seen.
     
  2. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    Why would you write a game story for a weekly anyway? Look ahead.
     
  3. Jeremy Goodwin

    Jeremy Goodwin Active Member

    Listen to Moddy.

    There is no point in runner a gamer that is almost a week old, either featurize the hell out of the story, look ahead, or forget this game and cover the upcoming weekend game (if there is one for either team). At least the weekend game will be newer.
     
  4. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    In my younger years, back when I didn't realize you had to pull punches a little bit when dealing with preps, I described one such matchup as being "as lopsided as bulldozer vs. dandelion."

    Man, were the dandelions pissed. And for good reason, I guess.
     
  5. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    We once called some similar game a "laugher." And got letters from 12 parents who said, "Don't laugh at our kids." All the parents got letters of apology from the brass and we got a note not to use "laugher" anymore.

    About two months later, we get a call-in that was something like 111-14. Guy who took it says, "I don't give a fuck about the rules. That is a laugher."
     
  6. fishwrapper

    fishwrapper Active Member

    That's enough to drive you to teach. ;)
     
  7. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    This was years and years ago but yeah. Shoulda seen the writing on the wall!

    We had a guy call once and ask if we had some written guides for when we used words like nipped, beat, whipped, crushed *** was 1-2 points a nip, 10 or under a beat, 11-20 a whipped? He was serious.
     
  8. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    One of my first assignments was a game like the one SilverShadow saw. Something like 65-6. I actually listed all the baskets for the loosing team and got a quote from the coach about how his team is trying hard.
     
  9. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    "but we sure do suck."
     
  10. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Hey, stop it. They were a technical school, and not the good kind of technical school, like Virginia Tech.

    This school annually sucked in everything. They went apeshit the one year the boys hoops team went 8-12 and squeaked into the small school tournament.
     
  11. Kaylee

    Kaylee Member

    I still remember, as an 18-year old stringer, writing an American Legion baseball gamer about how one team "edged out" the other 15-0.

    I took Big Gulps of crap over that for years. And deserved it.
     
  12. Moderator1

    Moderator1 Moderator Staff Member

    I'm sure the game was close at one point.
    Then the dude say "play ball" and shit all changed.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page